A summer ripe with server connectivity innovation

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Summary

This year has so far seen a wave of innovation in server connectivity. Major players such as AWS, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and Microsoft are making notable advancements in their programmable NIC offerings. These developments will enhance networking capabilities and AI/ML use cases, improving overall performance. As these vendors continue to push the boundaries of networking capabilities, OMDIA anticipates momentous strides forward in the programmable Ethernet adapter market.

Here we use the term “programmable NIC” interchangeably with the terms “data processing unit” (DPU) and SmartNIC. Despite the best efforts by the marketing departments at programmable NIC vendors, including that at Intel advocating for the term “infrastructure processing unit” (IPU), Omdia has found that the term DPU is now used to refer to programmable NICs most frequently and is the term we’ve used below.